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Wednesday, October 11, 2017

More pennies from heaven, once again, the MacArthur Foundation waffles in its distribution of Big Macs (Fellowships)

It’s that time of year, folks. The MacArthur Foundation has
announced its latest round of so-called genius grants – a term they coyly back
away from – and the world of elite institutions rejoices in the largesse it
bestows on “the creative class”. In its annual flurry of air kisses to the
Foundation’s Big Mac program (aka The MacArthur Fellows), The NewYork Times quotes Cecilia A. Conrad, leader of the fellows program, as
saying

the goal was to find “people on the
precipice,” where the award will make a difference, but also to inspire
creativity more broadly.

“We hope that when people read
about the fellows, it makes them think about how they might be more creative in
their own lives,” Ms. Conrad said. “It does something for the human spirit.”

Gimme’ a break. What a whopper. The program’s mostly special
sauce, with only a little beef on a nice fluffy bun.

Yes, since the beginning, the program’s nattered on about
helping people on the edge, “where the award will make a difference”, but it
has mostly given its awards to people who are safe and secure, that is, to
people like the good folks at the MacArthur Foundation. To be sure, most of
these people are very creative, but most of them have secure gigs as well. They
are not on any precipice. They aren’t making a living waiting tables at Mom’s
Miracle Meal, doing temp word-processing at Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, hustling
pool at Benny’s Billiard Emporium, or any other make-do gig. They don’t have to
work day gigs to pay the rent so they can be creative at nights and on
weekends. Their day gig IS their creative gig.

Why doesn’t the Foundation come clean and stop giving awards
to people who have secure jobs? Yeah, I know, that would force them to look
outside the circle of elite institutions which they serve. It would make their
work harder. It might even force them to be, you know, creative. What a novel
idea!

* * * * *

I’ve been writing about this public relations campaign – for
that’s what it is – since 2013. In the first year I did more than simply gripe
about the unadventurous class of 2013; I also recounted the history of the
MacArthur Fellowships. Then, in a series of four follow-up posts, I elaborated
on that original critique. In subsequent years I’ve tallied the current class.
I have been accumulating those posts into a working paper:

Here’s the Big Mac “waffle” tally (percentage of awards to
people with secure gigs) for the last five years, including 2017:

2013: 63%
2014: 52%
2015: 54%
2016: 57%
2017: 50%

The 2017 tally is a first, 50-50, half at secure university
gigs, half at other gigs. Note, however, that two of those other gigs are a
tenure-track university posts, and one of them is with The New York Times. No guarantees there, unlike the secure jobs,
but they’re pretty safe. There are no starving artists in this crowd.

Secure University
Positions: These people have
the rank of Associate Professor or above. As that rank normally carries tenure
I assume these people have lifetime employment. They DO NOT need this award in
order to put a roof over their head, or food on the table. For various reasons,
above and beyond the mere fact that life is tough, these people may not be
happy with their secure jobs. But that’s a different matter.

Tenure-track
University Positions: These are
assistant professors, which is normally pre-tenure. I am assuming that they are
in salary lines intended for tenure, but tenure is not guaranteed. For
example, Henry
Louis Gates failed to get tenure at Yale even though he’d won a Big
Mac (maybe it didn’t have enough cheese).

Other-Employed: These people work for someone else, but not a
university. In a number of cases they’re working at organizations they’ve
founded.

Self-Employed: Just what it says. There people are on their
own, though most of them have some substantial recognition along with
high-class track records.

And here they are, the MacArthur Fellows for 2017:

Secure University Jobs – 12

Sunil Amrith, 38,

Historian,

Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Regina Barzilay, 46

Computer scientist

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Dawoud Bey, 63

Photographer and educator,

Columbia College Chicago, Chicago

Emmanuel Candès, 47

Mathematician and statistician

Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.

Jason De Léon, 40

Anthropologist

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, 46

Fiction writer and cultural critic

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Kate Orff, 45

Landscape architect,

Founder and partner, Scape, and associate professor, Columbia, University, New York